(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer-readable recording medium recording therein a system managing program for enabling a computer to manage a system made up of a plurality of servers, a system managing method, and a system managing apparatus, and more particularly to a computer-readable recording medium recording therein a system managing program for allowing hardware resources to be automatically added, a system managing method, and a system managing apparatus.
(2) Description of the Related Art
At present, various services are provided through networks. When the number of users of a system increases, the load on the system increases in operation. Therefore, a need arises to strengthen the functions of the system. Generally, when a computer system runs short of sufficient processing capabilities, resources including servers and storage devices are added to make up for the shortage, reconstructing the system in its entirety.
As a computer system becomes larger in scale and has its system configuration frequently changed, it becomes difficult to operate the resources efficiently. There have been proposed various techniques for making more efficient the operation of resources such as storage devices, etc. (see, for example, Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 2004-227359, Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 2001-184175, and Japanese laid-open patent publication No. H05-173873).
Conventional systems judge an optimum system configuration based on various management information, representing a free disk capacity, etc., which is managed by an OS (Operating System). Actually, however, since functions based on an application program (hereinafter simply referred to as “application”) perform processing activities using resources, the judgment may possibly be inadequate if it is based on only the management information from the OS.
For example, for storing data in a storage device (including a RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks) device) connected to a computer system, an application running on the computer system writes the data on a disk that is assigned to the application. The written data is updated or deleted by the application.
Data processed by an application includes various attributes such as updated date, size, owner, I/O response, importance, and recovery frequency. Some of these attributes, e.g., importance and recovery frequency, can only be grasped on the application. If resource overage and shortage are judged with disregard to those attributes, then the following problems arise:
1) A general file system has information as to the time and date of final access to data, but not information as to access frequency. If data of low access frequency is left undeleted in a fast, expensive disk device, then the disk device ROI (Return On Investment) becomes low. Stated otherwise, data of low access frequency does not need to be stored in a fast, expensive disk device. When the data is transferred to another medium, the high-functionality disk device can effectively be utilized.
2) If data of low access frequency is left undeleted in a disk device, reducing its free disk capacity, then the I/O response, i.e., a period of time spent after an access request is sent to the disk device until a response is returned from the disk device, of the disk device becomes slow. This phenomenon manifests itself when access concentrates on a certain location of the disk.
3) Recent computer systems experience frequent configurational changes such as the addition of a disk device. Because of such frequent configurational changes, even if the computer system has an access monitoring function, the added disk device may possibly escape from being monitored. Therefore, it is difficult to keep on monitoring access from an application to data in the disk device, using a monitoring function different from the application.
4) Scheduled automatic data backup is performed by a dedicated application. Since such a backup schedule has not been used as information for system operation management, the data backup has been inefficient. For example, backup management does not ensure data backup in view of data updating information, i.e., performs differential data backup with no information as to whether it is optimally scheduled or not, but backs up data periodically once a day or a week regardless of the risk of losing the data. The data backup practice tends to significantly affect all aspects from application defects to system disaster, and needs to go through substantial redoing.
5) The administrator manually presets a disk whose data has to be backed up. When hardware is added or removed, the administrator is liable to forget data backup.
As described above, it has heretofore been difficult to perform efficient system management depending on the processing details of an application because of a lack of management information obtained from the application.